1914] on Some Aspects of the American Democracy 215- 



naturally the political acts done at Washington ; for these, of course, 

 include the foreign relations of the Government. Naturally, too. 

 the chief social phenomena observed by foreign visitors are of life 

 in a few large cities. But life in the big cities is not the typical 

 nor the dominant life. In spite of the rush to the cities during 

 recent decades, which, for economic reasons, has taken place in the 

 United States as elsewhere in the world, the typical and dominant 

 life in the Republic is still the rural life, and life in the villages and 

 towns and smaller cities. The people in New York, Chicago, 

 Philadelphia, and Boston do not elect a majority of the members of 

 Congress, nor of the forty-eight legislatures of the States : it is the 

 country folk that do these things. Nor do the people in our few 

 big cities produce the great wealth of the country which they handle ;: 

 nor do they do the thinking for the mass of the people. 



It is necessary for an understanding of the American democracy 

 to keep constantly in mind the millions that dwell on the soil and in 

 small towns, the inhabitants of the great valleys of the Mississippi 

 river and of its chief tributaries. Take it through and through, the 

 nation is yet a rural nation ; and it is the country people who really 

 rule it. 



But state differs from state, and region from region in natural 

 advantages, in degrees of well-being, and in the cultivation of the 

 people. In studying them, the problem is to avoid mistaking 

 merely local facts and tendencies for general forces. In this too 

 hurried glimpse, I shall try to show at least one permanent principle 

 — one aim which guides a great number of apparently unrelated 

 activities. 



The most striking single fact about the United States is, I think, 

 this spectacle, which, so far as I know, is new in the world : On that 

 great agricultural area are about seven million farms of an average 

 size of about 140 acres, most of which are tilled by the owners them- 

 selves, a population that varies greatly, of course, in its thrift and 

 efficiency, but most of which is well-housed, in houses they them- 

 selves own, well-clad, w^ell-fed, a population that trains practically all 

 its children in schools maintained by public taxation ; their local 

 governments are wholly of their own making, and they exert the 

 greatest influence also in making the National Government — economic- 

 ally and politically free, every man past twenty-one years, and in 

 a group of states, every woman also with a vote ; and it is the votes 

 of these that make and unmake governments. 



This wide-spread spectacle is seldom thoroughly seen by foreign 

 visitors, for it requires years to observe it closely. But, after a man 

 has studied it a lifetim^e, and become aware of its gigantic strength, 

 and knows its spirit by being a part of it, he readily subscribes to the 

 paradox that there is something better even than good government,, 

 and that is government in which all the people have a part ; ^ f or 

 individual independence and responsibility are even more precious 



